Tag Archives: California

More Than Just Business

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Some photos from a business trip.

As I type this, I’m sitting at Gate A6 at Burbank Airport. I just finished up a five-day business trip in Ventura, CA, where I worked with a new client. It was a very satisfactory week, primarily because the client picked up all of my expenses and they put me up in a very nice room on Ventura Harbor.

Yes, it was a Holiday Inn Express. But it was also one of the nicest hotel rooms I’ve stayed in for a long time. My first floor room may have lacked a patio, but it had vaulted ceilings and floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the harbor. This, in fact, was my view:

That shot’s only slightly zoomed in. The boats were so close that, if my window opened a bit wider, I could have lobbed bars of soap at them.

Let me just say a few more things about this most excellent room. It was quiet — no sound from next door, no sound from the hall, no sound from outside — even with the window open! It included a nice sized fridge, two burner stove, microwave, sink, and various pots, pans, plates, and utensils. In other words, I could have prepared my own meals. The bathroom was huge and included a glass-enclosed shower stall, deep jacuzzi tub, and vanity with stool. The main room had a comfortable king-sized bed, sofa, desk, and round table with two chairs right in the prow window. Not only was it bigger than my first apartment, but it was a heck of a lot better equipped. Although I didn’t spend much time there, it was nice to come “home” to such a nice place after a long day at work.

On Tuesday, after work, I walked to the ocean from my room. I figure it was about a mile each way, walking along the south side of the harbor. I took some photos.

Here’s a flower right outside my hotel. I don’t know what it is, but it was beautiful. And my CoolPix’s macro mode did a nice job of capturing it, even in questionable light.

Near the end of the harbor was an arcade with a tiny carousel inside. I took a few shots of the ride in motion, but I like this shot, which I took after the kids had climbed off, the best:

After dinner at Andria’s, I walked back the same way I’d come. I caught sight of what I think is a Great Blue Heron just moments after it plucked a fish out of the water. I got this slightly blurred shot of the bird with the fish in its mouth:

Last night, I could see a great sunset from my window. I went out in my slippers for a better angle and got this shot:

I had a surprisingly good time in Ventura. It’s a nice little town with lots of great dining opportunities. I ate as I always do when I’m away from Wickenburg: as if I haven’t eaten a good meal in years. Next week, it’s back to my diet.

Travel Plans

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Three trips in just over a month.

Pity me. I’ll be on 9 different airliners over the next 40 days.

First Stop: Florida

There’s a joke that New Yorkers “get” and I’ll be so bold as to try it here:

Q: What’s a good Jewish wine?

A: [whining] I want to go to Florida.

While midwesterners and northwesterners retire to Arizona, New Yorkers (and others from the northeast) retire to Florida. Not only do they retire there, but they vacation there. And since New York has a huge Jewish population that vacations and retires in Florida — mostly in the Fort Lauderdale area — this joke is funny. Well, at least it’s funny to New Yorkers. (And having heard it from a Jewish person, I don’t think it’s offensive to Jews. You may correct me if I’m wrong.)

Both of my parents retired to Florida. While many people think that might make sense — that they retired together — it’s not as easy as that. They’re both remarried and they each moved to different parts of Florida with their spouses.

My mother, who I’m going to see next week, moved to the St. Augustine area. Technically, she lives in Crescent Beach, which is on the far southern reaches of St. Augustine. She lives with my stepdad on the barrier island there. Her home, which she had custom-built about 10 years ago, sits on a tiny canal.

She and my stepdad used to have a boat, but fuel and maintenance costs made that impractical, considering the amount of time they actually used it. So now they have a bulkhead with a bench overlooking the canal. Their neighbors have boats that they seldom use, too, and they can look out on those.

The area is nicely treed and quiet. There are lots of sea birds.

My mom’s house was built in a U-shape. On one end of the U is the master bedroom and bath. On the other end is another bedroom with its own bathroom just up the hall. That was supposed to be my grandmother’s bedroom, but like so many people back east, she couldn’t leave the area she’d lived in for her whole life. (In fact, she died within 50 miles of where she was born, having lived in only three or maybe four places her entire life.) Grandma’s room is the best room in the house, with privacy, easy access to the pool and hot tub between the arms of the U, a nice bathroom, and its own thermostat. Although the house has four bedrooms, I try to manage my trips so I get Grandma’s room. I stayed in the “kid’s room” once with Mike and was incredibly uncomfortable sharing the tiny space beside the trundle bed with a treadmill’s bulk.

My mother and stepdad are going to Italy at the end of the month for two weeks. This is a huge deal. They don’t travel much and I can’t remember the last time they left the country. They’re going with a tour group (of course) and I don’t know the itinerary, but I’m sure I’ll be filled in when I get there on Tuesday evening.

I haven’t been to my mother’s house since Thanksgiving 2006. She hasn’t been out here since Thanksgiving (or perhaps Christmas?) 2004 (?). She really doesn’t like to travel by plane. One year, they decided to drive out. Yes: St. Augustine, FL to Wickenburg, AZ, a distance of more than 2,100 miles. You might be asking yourself: what were they thinking? The answer: they weren’t. It was a long drive and they were on freeways the entire way. It might not have been so bad if they didn’t hit a dust storm in the Tucson area, but they were tired when they encountered that and it really rattled them.

It takes two planes to fly to visit them — no one has a direct flight from Phoenix to Jacksonville or Daytona (she lives right between them). I could get a direct flight to Orlando, but then I’d spend more than an hour driving from there. I’d rather spend that hour on the ground, in Houston, looking for a nice lunch and shopping in the airport terminal.

I’ll be in Florida for five days: Tuesday through Saturday. Two jets each way equals four different jets.

California, Here I Come!

My next trip is for business. I’m flying into Burbank, CA to meet with a new client for a brand new job. I can’t go into details because I’m under nondisclosure (NDA), but I can say that I’m working on a new project that should be completed by the end of May. I’ll talk about it more then.

I’m flying Southwest into Burbank. I don’t like flying Southwest. The lack of seat assignments is a royal pain in the butt. I like to know before I get on a plane where I’ll sit on that plane. And since I’m likely to have carry-on luggage, I like to know for sure that I’ll be able to stow it. Southwest makes knowing these things impossible, so I tend to avoid it.

But my client paid for this trip’s airfare and booked it for me, so I can’t complain. It’s a more convenient flight than I’d get with another airline — Burbank is closer to my final destination than LAX, and a heck of a lot less crazed. I’ll probably save a whole hour of travel time by avoiding traffic. And maybe, just maybe, Southwest isn’t as bad as I remember it.

Because this trip is for business, I don’t expect to have much fun. I have to finish the entire project in 4-1/2 days. (I arrive on Sunday and depart on Friday at about noon.) The quicker I work, the more time I’ll have to goof off, so that’s a good motivator. And not finishing up on time is not an option.

It’s just one jet each way, but if you’re counting, that brings the total up to six jets between now and May 9.

The Washington Trip

In mid-May comes the trip I’ve been looking forward to: a helicopter flight from Wickenburg to Boeing Field in Seattle, Wa. There’s nothing I love more than long cross-country trips by helicopter. If I could figure out a way to earn a living doing it, I’d be doing it all the time.

The trip is to reposition the aircraft for my summer job. Yes, this year, after two years of false hopes, I’ve been signed up to do cherry drying for growers in central Washington state. But to do the work, I need to get the aircraft up there. That means a 10-12 hour ferry flight which I hope we can complete within two days. Once at BFI, I’ll leave the helicopter with a buddy’s mechanic for an annual inspection, which will be due by then.

Since I’ll be in central Washington for at least a month, I’ll need a place to stay. So right after I drop off the helicopter, I’ll hop on a plane for Wenatchee, WA, rent a car, and start scouting around. I plan to drive up with my new old truck pulling my travel trailer. Alex the Bird and I will camp out for the entire time. I’m interested in finding an affordable campground with full hookup and WiFi, but there’s a chance I might get a free (or almost free) partial hookup with (fingers crossed) WiFi at the same private airport where the helicopter will be based for the first part of the season. Since I have time, I figured I’d go check out my options. It’s a long drive from Wickenburg, AZ to Quincy, WA, and I want to make sure I know where I’m going to be parking my rig before I get there.

The plane from Seattle to Wenatchee may not be a jet, but it will be part of an airline. I fly from Seattle to Wenatchee and then back to Seattle before flying home to Phoenix. If you’re keeping count, that’s three more plane rides for a total of nine.

Other Work

Between all of that, I have other work to do.

I have two helicopter charters for Flying M Air — one of which is later today. After that, Flying M Air’s Phoenix-area operations are closed for the season. I have 21 hours left on the Hobbs meter before I need a 100-hour inspection (which is about the same as an annual, but must be done every 100 hours). If I fly 2-1/2 hours today and 3-1/2 hours on Monday, that leaves 15 hours for the ferry flight and helicopter training I need to do (in Portland, OR, which I hope to hit on the way to Seattle). While I’m allowed to go over the 100 hours if the flight is repositioning the aircraft to where the maintenance will be done, I’m not allowed to go over it for training flights. So I simply can’t take on any new charter flights until I get to Washington.

(And yes, I can continue to operate my tour and charter business in Washington State. My Part 135 certificate is “portable.” So when I’m not drying cherries, I hope to make a few extra bucks by transporting growers and other folks who need to get from place to place near my summer base(s).)

I also need to record a training video for macPro Video. I would have started this last week, or this week, but I’ve been having trouble getting satisfactory recording equipment together. (See my video blog entry about this.) I might try to do some of it in Florida. We’ll see. Otherwise, I’ll have to do it between the Florida and California trips.

I also need to go to Howard Mesa to pick up a few things I’ll need on my summer-long trip. Among them is Alex the Bird’s mid-size cage, which should fit nicely on a shelf in the camper, my low-wattage one-cup coffee maker, and some odds and ends that’ll come in handy for off-the-grid camping, if I need to do any of that. I’d also very much like to get away from here for a weekend because of a variety of other crazy things going on.

And I need to get ready to write a new book about QuickBooks Pro for Macintosh. I’ll work on that while I’m away this summer. I’ll be bringing two (possibly three) laptops with me so I can write. There’s another book I’ll be working on while away, but I’m under NDA about that and can’t say more.

In any case, I’m looking forward to a challenging summer away from Wickenburg.

I’m also looking forward to my three shorter trips over the next 40 days. I really do love to travel.

Aerial Photos from Our Las Vegas Flight

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Better late than never.

Back in the beginning of March, while my mother-in-law was visiting us from New York, I flew the three of us from Wickenburg to Las Vegas by helicopter.

I chose my favorite route for that flight: straight to Lake Havasu City and up the Colorado River all the way to Lake Mead, then west to McCarran Airport. The flight went well, but strong headwinds turned what should have been a 1.8 hour flight into a 2.5 hour flight. (It also made the flight a bit rough in some places.) Mike, sitting in the back, had my old PowerShot camera. Here are a few of the photos he took along the way. I chose the ones where you can see details within the cockpit to put the scenes in perspective. It’s also kind of cool (at least to me) to see the instruments and gauges in the panel.

Here’s Lake Havasu City. That’s London Bridge below us — the real thing, brought over from England in the 1970s. I always start my upriver flights with an overflight of the bridge.

Much farther up the river, we reached Hoover Dam and the bypass bridge, which is still under construction. Hoover Dam, in case you don’t know, holds in Lake Mead. The white line right above water level is about 60 feet tall and marks the high water line. (The water level is way down.) We would have gotten some better photos of the dam and bridge if the area weren’t so darn congested. There was a tour helicopter high over the dam and a pair of military helicopters that would be cutting right between us, less than 500 feet over my head. I didn’t waste much time there.

After crossing the southwest corner of Lake Mead, I headed west toward the city. Here’s a shot as we were getting ready to cross Lake Las Vegas. If you’ve got sharp eyes (or the full-sized photo) you can see the Las Vegas skyline on the horizon on the right side of the photo.

Air Traffic Control at McCarran instructed me to fly toward the Stratosphere when I was still 15 miles out. I wound up flying just south of it — my altitude was below the glassed-in restaurant/ amusement level of the tower. (At the time, I recall wondering what people looking out at us must have been thinking.) I’m particularly fond of this shot because it’s so damn surreal.

We made our approach to McCarran flying down I-15, then descending between Luxor and Mandalay Bay to land on the ramp. I have video of it from my POV.1, but I don’t think it’s all that good. I’ll have to do it again one of these days with the camera mounted in its new position. (More on that another time.)

Tourist Photos from San Francisco

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Or fun with a camera.

Note to feed subscribers: You may not see the photos in this article in your RSS reader. That’s because of the way they’re embedded. If you like photography, I do hope you’ll take a moment to visit the site and see the photos. If you don’t, just skip it. I understand.

I was in San Francisco last week for Macworld Expo. In the old days, I used to spend every day at the show. Nowadays, I’m more interested in seeing things outside the exhibit hall. With a half day to spend on my own, I took the cable car from Market and Powell to Fisherman’s Wharf. Here are some of the photos I took that morning.

I started my day just after sunrise at the corner of Powell and Market, five or six blocks from Moscone Hall, where Macworld Expo is held each year. This is the terminus for two of San Francisco’s three cable car lines. The photo here shows one of the cable car drivers turning the car around for the trip back to Fisherman’s Wharf. Although the photo is distorted (because of that darn fisheye lens I like so much), the ground here is relatively level. They manually push the car onto the turntable and turn it, then push it back onto the main track. After paying off a homeless person for telling me that I could buy my ticket on the cable car — it was either that or buy a newspaper I didn’t want to carry — and assuring another homeless person that I didn’t need him to take a photo of me and the cable car with my camera, I climbed on board.

The cable car took off up Powell a while later with a surprising number of people on board. The corner of Market and Powell isn’t far from the BART station and apparently the cable car is a valid mode of transportation for commuters. There certainly weren’t many tourists on board at 7:30 AM. We climbed up Powell, dropping off passengers here and there. I took this photo when the car was nearly empty. Again, there’s some distortion from the fisheye lens, but I think it’s a cool shot of the cable car and its driver.

The car deposited me at Bay Street about two blocks from Fisherman’s Wharf. From there, I wandered around, taking photos of the area. The sun was too low to get the shots I wanted, so went in search of breakfast. Boudin’s Bakery was there and I stepped inside. I love freshly baked bread, but I was on a diet and trying hard to avoid excess carbs. But I did get a good photo op when I saw this “Bread Line” sign. It was just too ironic for me to pass up.

Back outside at the Wharf with the sun still too low for shadow-free photos, I asked one of the fish guys where I could get a good breakfast in a place the tourists didn’t go. He pointed up the street to a “hole in the wall” called Darren’s Cafe. While waiting for my meal, I snapped this weird self-portrait with that fisheye lense. I don’t look happy here, probably because I knew the camera was shooting a picture up my nose.

After breakfast, I strolled north along the wharf area, stopping a few times to take photos of the fishing boats. Unlike most tourists, I didn’t stick to the well-trodden places. I poked around on all the piers, taking my time and seeing as many different things from as many different angles as I could. It was a beautiful day with clear blue skies and light wind. Not very cold, either. Here are a few of my more interesting shots in that area.

After a while, I found myself in Aquatic Park, which is part of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. There are a number of old, art deco buildings there and the light was just right to get creative with some shapes and shadows on a round building that used to house a public restroom. A flight of stairs curved up the side of the building to an observation deck on top. But the views from up there didn’t interest me as much as the stairs, shown here.

From the park, there were sweeping views of San Francisco Bay. But the best views were obviously from the curving arm of the Municipal Pier. So I took off on foot along the long, crumbling concrete and steel pier. The only people on the pier were a handful of Asian fisherman, although when I reached the remains of the building at the far end, another tourist pedaled up on a bicycle. We had a short chat before I walked back. Here are the photos I took along the way. They show, in order, the rust of steel embedded in the concrete, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Alcatraz.

It was nearly 10 AM by the time I got off the pier. I had to check out of my hotel by 1:30 PM, but I had a few errands to take care of on the way back. So I walked up to the cable car terminus at Hyde, which is just a few blocks away. By this time, the tourists were coming out and there was about a dozen people waiting. I snapped a series of photos of the cable car being turned. If I look at them quickly in sequence, they look like a movie. Here are five of the six shots in miniature:

Cable Car Turning at Hyde

On the way back to the Union Square area, I had a nice conversation with a woman who lives in San Francisco and uses the cable car to commute back and forth to work across the city. I couldn’t help but be envious. How wonderful it would be to ride in an open seat through such a beautiful city every day.

At Macworld Expo

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Are you there? I’ll be there soon.

As this is appearing online, I’m boarding a plane for Macworld Expo in San Francisco. This is yet another one of my quick in and out trips — I really can’t afford to be away from my office for more than two days. I’ll arrive in SF around 9:30 this morning and depart around 3:30 on Thursday afternoon. In between, I’m staying at the Nikko.

I have a lot to squeeze into this trip:

  • Wednesday, 12:00 PM – meeting with two editors, one publisher, and a representative from an online publishing group regarding ebooks and ebook piracy issues. I’m tired of seeing little ebook revenue while copies of my ebooks are floating around on file sharing sites. Armed with some excellent feedback from an ebook reader, I’m going to propose some changes to the way my work appears in ebooks. I also hope to spend some time talking to one of my editors about a book we hope to start next week.
  • Wednesday, 2:00 PM – appearing at the Peachpit Press booth on the show floor. I’m doing a 45-minute presentation and hope to cover some productivity tips and tricks for Leopard users. Peachpit will be videoing the presentation for eventual distribution online.
  • Wednesday, after 3 PM – seeing the show floor. I’ll be walking around armed with my cameras: Treo for instant Web publishing of images, Nikon D80 with fisheye lens for a very different look at the show floor, and video camera for content I hope to put together as a short Macworld Expo movie.
  • Wednesday, after 6 PM – attending one or two parties (depending on how tired I am).
  • Thursday, before 1 PM – see Wedneday, after 3 PM. More of the same.

If you’d like to see photos from Macworld as they are taken, visit my TumbleLog. I expect to start sending photos as soon as I arrive in SF. I’ll try to make them interesting.

Product ImageI’ll also be giving away two copies of my Leopard book during my Peachpit booth presentation. One of them will go to the first presentation attendee who tells me he/she read about the giveaway here.

If you’re at Macworld Expo and want to say hello, drop by the Peachpit Press booth. I usually pop in now and then during my time on the show floor. I’d to meet you!